Posts in the “zen” category

A “mind coin” cartoon, from this Cambridge Zen Center Twitter page.

The book, The Old Zen Master, by Trevor Leggett isn’t one of my personal favorites, but this quote seems appropriate for this time of year:

We sweep up the fallen leaves in the garden,
But we don’t hate the trees for dropping them.

“There is nothing staid, nothing settled in this universe. All is rippling, all is dancing; all is quickness and triumph.”

~ A little Zen from Virginia Woolf

“Even when I was just three years old, I could recall many previous lives. But to many people this sort of thinking isn’t acceptable, so now when I’m asked what I can remember, I just say, ‘I remember when I was three years old.’”

~ a monk

(a facebook post from this date in 2010)

“A state of being is an experience. A description of a state of being is a symbol. Symbols and experience do not follow the same rules.”

~ The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics

This image is from this New Yorker article on modern day mindfulness. This is a “poem” about mindfulness at the workplace.

“The secret to any disaster is relaxing into it.”

(from this twitter page)

This image comes from this oprah.com story, where they also state that meditation helps people experience “experienced less stress, anxiety, and depression.”

I don’t like the word “suffering” in Buddhism. In fact I dislike it, strongly. It’s a turnoff. I don’t feel like I’m suffering. I’ve had five operations so far, and cancer, too. But I’m not suffering. But if you realize the Pali word for this term is dukkha, and that word is interpreted more as “deep dissatisfaction,” okay, that I can relate to.

A funny Zen meditation image, posted by the folks at the Providence Zen Center on either Twitter or Facebook (I don’t remember where).

Zen humor. :) It looks like this cartoon comes from speedbump.com.

Facebook tells me that I posted this image there a year ago today. Zen koans are often like this, like Abbott and Costello routines.

A few weeks ago I learned about a text called “Fukan zazengi,” which contains instructions for Zen meditation (Zazen) practice. The image shown comes from this stanford.edu page. If you’re interested in learning how to meditate without the background material or Buddha references, just skip down to the fourth paragraph.

“Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.” ~ Alan Watts

It can be important to know that when you read a story about a Zen monk gaining enlightenment, that enlightenment may be for just an instant, not a lifetime. This 90-second video explains this.

This is a very good short talk on how to meditate by Zen Master Bon Yeon:

A short video titled, “From U.S. Marine to Zen Monk”:

Zen thought of the day:

This photo shows two attempts at creating images for my next Zen Foundation postcard. The first image represents my first “final” attempt. In this case I knew I wasn’t blown away by the image, but it was the best I could do that night. I posted it on Facebook, got some feedback from a friend, and eventually came up with the second image, which is what I decided to go with.

(Click the image to see a much larger version of it.)

“You don’t have to understand here to be here.”

~ Charlie Crews, in the excellent tv series about Life and Zen